Tuesday May 27th, 2003 is a significant marker in the history of the web. On that day 15 years ago, in a tiny corner of the internet, a new software package titled “WordPress” made its debut. It’s goal: Make this thing called “blogging” possible for anyone and everyone. Just three years earlier I sat in…

NB: This article is part of a series on the new WordPress editing experience called "Gutenberg". If you are not familiar with Gutenberg, check out the first article in the series. As the Gutenberg project moves ever closer to merging with WordPress, users, administrators, designers, developers, and core contributors are raising concerns about timelines and what…

Everything you know about WordPress is about to change. The project codenamed "Gutenberg" is reimagining what content creation and editing on the web should look like and how it should work. Some time in 2018 the way WordPress works and the way you work with WordPress will change in a fundamental way, whether you are a visitor,…

Update August 10, 2017: After publishing this article I reopened the Trac ticket arguing the reason for closing it was no longer valid in lieu of Gutenberg’s collection of telemetry. A few hours later it was announced that usage tracking will be removed from Gutenberg and the ticket was closed as the original argument for closing it is once again accurate.…

Below are the advanced slides for my WordCamp Europe 2017 talk CSS Grid Changes Everything (About Web Layouts) presented June 17th, 2017 in Paris, France: From the website: “CSS Grid is now live in all major browsers, and with it everything we know about web layouts changes! Imagine drawing a grid in the browser and…

Earlier today I was asked to share with my team what accomplishments I was most proud of in 2016. Rolling back the tape and looking at everything that’s happened in this year, I realized I should do some sort of year in review / inventory to document what I’ve done and challenge myself to do…

The prevailing narrative in the web community hails empathy as a cure for much of what ails our modern digital spaces. Empathy seems a worthy tool for making our designs and interactive experiences more human, but used indiscriminately it may do more harm than good. To design experiences that fit the real lives of the people who use them, we need to take a critical look at our methods and make empathy the first step in a larger process.